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GPR and Geophysics with Dr. Dan Bigman - Ep 190
513 Plays2 years ago
(ENCORE of Ep 123) Dr. Dan Bigman from Bigman Geophysical joins the show once again to talk about GPR and other methods in a CRM context. Of course this works for any project, but, we focused on contract archaeology for some portions of this episode.
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Transcript
Introduction and Membership Appeal
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey podcast fans, this is Chris Webster, founder of the APN, and I just want to thank you for downloading this episode. Please consider becoming a member of the APN, if you're not already, and helping us make more great shows and get them out to the world. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash members, or click the link in the show notes. On to the show. You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Episode Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archeotech Podcast, Episode 190. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Paul and I are still getting back in sync after our time off and his time in the Middle East, so we're replaying Episode 123 with shallow geophysics and ground-penetrating radar specialist, Dan Bigman. Let's get to it.
00:00:44
Speaker
All right, everybody. Welcome to the Archiotech podcast. Paul, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm doing all right. How are you doing today, Chris? Not too bad. Not too bad. Busy as usual. Man, I've had like six hours straight of client meetings today without like a room to breathe. And now we're doing a podcast. So it's been great.
00:01:01
Speaker
All right, so we are bringing on what I want to say. I didn't actually do the research on this, but I think it's a two time guest, Dr. Dan Bigman. And I met him first when we were at the University of Georgia. Actually, I didn't have a lot of interaction with Dan at the University of Georgia. I think my class went out and see one of the sites you were working on or something.
00:01:18
Speaker
you were in the ends of your PhD program and we kind of met then, but then we sort of stayed in touch over the years. So, and I interviewed you a few years ago, at least on the architect podcast, but we're bringing you back on because you're on to bigger and better things and you're just continuing to do stuff. So Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks guys. I appreciate it.
Dan Bigman on Geophysics in Archaeology
00:01:36
Speaker
Why don't we start by just talking about what your company is and what your company does, just your elevator pitch for that? My company is called Big Mad Geophysical. I started it five years ago after working in academia for a few years. I've taught at Georgia State University. The company basically provides training, equipment software, and project and technical support
00:01:59
Speaker
for folks using geophysics. And obviously, my background is in archaeology. And so a lot of the folks that we work with are also in the CRM world. And so I think it's nice and helpful to be on this podcast for sure, because we're constantly on sites with equipment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. But that's what we do. So we basically provide training, equipment, software, and field support.
00:02:26
Speaker
for projects that are utilizing geophysics or other methods of non-destructive testing. All right. And so for somebody that doesn't know anything about GPR or other geophysical methods, they can come to you guys to not only get some of the equipment, but also learn how to use that equipment. Take a class from you guys. Are these on-site instructional classes? Do you go to them? Do they come to you? Do you do these in other places? How does that work?
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So we do both. We probably train more people in ground penetrating radar than anyone else in North America. We are credited with NOLCA and we're actually in the process right now of being able to provide engineers, for example, with continuing education credits.
00:03:06
Speaker
And so we'll hold public courses usually about once a month. We hold them all over the country. A lot of them are in Atlanta because I'm in Atlanta. But in Cincinnati, Texas, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, Toronto, we've held them in.
00:03:21
Speaker
and we've held them all over the world i've held courses in the uk and australia for the australia listeners i just came back from a from a night trip to australia was my third or fourth trip over there and so we hold them all over the place and so we'll do these public ones but then we'll also have uh private trainings private group trainings where we'll come out not only train you on the theory and the concepts and do it you know classroom based training but we will we are the only
00:03:45
Speaker
training company that will go on site to your project collected data hand-in-hand with you as your training and hope for us you know we're from the field hey you know how you said in the beginning of the thing you came to the site that i was working on the amount of hairs i pulled out was on that site is ridiculous.
00:04:03
Speaker
And so we have kind of been through the hardest stuff, and I've probably made more mistakes than anybody, but luckily I'm willing to share those mistakes and help people avoid them. And so we will come on to site with you, archaeological project, cemetery project, which is pretty popular, obviously, in CRM or anything else, and literally train you on your equipment, on your site. There's no other better way to get exposure. You know, unfortunately, there are
00:04:33
Speaker
some companies that will have a pre manufactured location. And it's like the perfect soils for geophysics and the perfect contrast with the targets. And it's not real. And so when people show up at our course, they say, Look, we got training and we then came back home.
00:04:51
Speaker
And nothing looked like it did when we were training. And so that's why we say we'll train you and we'll totally train you in the soils that you're going to be working on with the system that you work on. And we don't care what system it is. We're totally agnostic to system. So the companies we represent, as far as equipment, represent four different manufacturers and actually rent out equipment from six different manufacturers because we're big believers in that the technician, the archaeologist is far more important than the label slapped on the side of the box that you're pushing around. So we'll train on anything. It doesn't matter if it's a sensors and software, a GSSI or Mala or
00:05:21
Speaker
or whatever. So yeah, so that's that's it is long winded answer. But that's, you know, the reason I am that is long winded is I'm passionate about education. And I think it's really important. And I was lucky enough to find a way, although I left academia, to stay in, in education, which is through technical training, and continuing education for professionals. Great. Now your clients, are they mostly archaeologists? Or are you? Do you have other clients beyond just archaeologists?
00:05:48
Speaker
We have other clients beyond archaeologists. Archaeologists probably make up for training wise, probably 10% of our clients. The other customers are engineers and folks in the construction space. So we all kind of use the same equipment.
00:06:07
Speaker
And we're big believers. If you understand how the physics work and you understand the material science behind it, then you can utilize the systems, whether you're in engineering or you're in construction or you're in archaeology or you're in environmental consulting. We train people on things like how to find groundwater and how to map.
00:06:24
Speaker
Aminated soils and find the plume for a leak and things like that. But then we'll also train on how do you find graves? How do you map an archaeological site? Because it's different. To map an archaeological site and go find utilities, those are different processes. There's things you have to do in one case that you don't have to do in another case. And so we go over all of that. So it's a wide variety. But archaeologists certainly make up at least a small portion of who we train.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's awesome that you've decided to take this and turn it into an educational resource and train people how to do these things because archaeologists, I mean, we always think we get into this field and it's like, oh, I'm just going to be out walking in the desert or digging shovel tests or doing these things. But there's a lot of technical aspects to what we do.
00:07:05
Speaker
And a lot of people just simply don't get that training in either their undergrad or their graduate course. I was fortunate, I was telling Paul this before the recording, that I took the shallow geophysics course at UGA when I was getting my master's there. And that was fantastic. Gave me a real primer on a lot of the shallow geophysical methods that you're talking about, that you guys do. So I want to talk about some of the stuff that you guys do and then some of the more CRM specific things or at least archaeology project specific things. Sure.
00:07:33
Speaker
But first, what got you into the training? I'm really curious about that because as somebody who's trying to sell digital recording methods to archaeologists for the last 10 years and really hitting a wall in a lot of cases because they're resistant to technology for whatever reason, maybe it's budget, maybe it's technical competency, who knows? I mean, it's like some archaeologists want to use tools to develop
00:07:56
Speaker
10,000 years ago. Excavating with the full support, it's not easy to do that. So, yeah, the way that we got to training was when I started to come, it was an archaeological visit, you know, contractual type of training.
00:08:14
Speaker
And I just went knocking on doors. And some people needed it. But there was quite a few folks out there who had actually owned equipment already. And they said the one guy or one gal who knew how to use it has gone to another firm.
00:08:31
Speaker
And we fold it up, put it in a closet, and it's been sitting there ever since. So rather than hire you to do the projects for us, can you train us and do the projects with us? And, you know, I, sure, I mean, it didn't matter to me. Business, I take anything I get, right?
00:08:50
Speaker
So that's kind of how it really evolved back into education was people were set, you know, it's a basic thing that they needed it. So as I dig some more digging, we found that there's so few options for training in geophysics, whether you're an archeologist, engineer, environmental professional, there's so few options beyond the university that if you didn't, if you weren't lucky like Chris, right? And you didn't have a program
00:09:17
Speaker
that like Chris and I, right, that you didn't have a program that offered it, then there was almost no options for you, you know, and the options were kind of limited to manufacturer specific. And so we came in and I said, I don't care what it is, I said, if we never used your system before, I said, bring it in, we will figure out your system while you're on site doing the training.
00:09:37
Speaker
And so, you know, that's kind of how it got started. We found that was just a typical situation everywhere, because people move around, you know, folks invest sometimes in technology, not always, certainly, but sometimes they do. And when they do, they want to, you know, they want to spend $25,000 on a piece of equipment has been $0 on training.
00:09:55
Speaker
And it doesn't work like that, right? It's a useless piece of machinery if nobody knows how to use it. And the folks who were putting it in the closet and folding it up really were what was going on. But at least they kind of opened their eyes and said, well, all right, here's someone who could potentially come in and get this thing back up and running. Because these technologies are money maker. And when you think about it, like, for example, the digital recording,
00:10:24
Speaker
that you offer, Chris, if it's an investment but you're saving time and you're able to produce, a big thing for us is workflow. Okay, we always get asked this question. I actually recently did a video about this on YouTube. By the way, so I have a YouTube channel called youtube.com forward slash learnGPR, free 90 plus videos on there. But I had a question like asked six times in a row to me. And so I did a video on it. It was like, what's the best GPR that's available?
00:10:52
Speaker
They kind of started going into it and saying they want the magic bullet, but the magic bullet really isn't there. In reality, it's the technology because people want to say, what's the best antenna? But the antenna isn't the only thing that's out there. The other big pieces that some software packages have that others don't are efficiency of workflow.
00:11:12
Speaker
And so being a very practical and kind of rolling into the next part of the of the podcast right about about in CRM is. Time from field to deliverable is such an important variable to control that it is the money maker and so going to digital recording and being able to save you know even if it costs you a little bit but you can save.
00:11:34
Speaker
you know, two thirds of your time from going from data collection to actual high quality, it's not just deliverable, it's high quality deliverable in one third of the time is a huge benefit. And folks don't unfortunately understand it until they actually go through it, right? When you've done something the same way over and over, it's hard sometimes to recognize the benefits that are right in front of you.
00:11:57
Speaker
For us, the point was that it was something that can save people time, save people money, and more importantly, when we're working with folks in the utility space and engineering, it's like if you can increase site safety by utilizing all the tools available to you so you have less of a chance of striking a gas line or electrical line or something like that, it's really your fault if you don't get trained.
00:12:21
Speaker
You bought the income and you're unwilling to spend another $1,000 or $2,000 or $5,000, so everybody knows how to use it well, then it's really on you, the liability lies with you. And so it's an important piece. And so folks who kind of are, to speak to your point, Chris, hesitant to grab onto new technology. We see this all the time where they say, look, I only get three calls a year for GPR or for Geofit. And so they struggle to justify
00:12:51
Speaker
purchasing a system. And we say to them that you only get three calls a year, but if you had a system on your truck and you offered every project, geophysics or non-destructive testing, or some level of it, so you probably wouldn't do three, you'd do 30 projects in your future.
00:13:11
Speaker
because you don't understand the impact of a tool until you actually have it available every day. And the same thing with the, you know, digital recording, right? It's like, it's hard to justify if you don't recognize, you know, if you don't actually have one enhanced sometimes to recognize, oh, wow, we just did the project that you should take us three weeks to do in one week.
00:13:30
Speaker
You know, and so it's such a benefit because it's true, right? I mean, you laugh because it's true, but it's such a benefit to utilize these technologies that, you know, that it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's sort of silly not to, you know, not, not to the training on this stuff and not to open yourself up to, to new technologies that, you know, may not be a generate, you know, revenue generator, but could certainly be kind of a revenue recover, you know, recovery system because you're buying your time back.
00:13:57
Speaker
The nice thing about those systems is while the GPR in particular might be, when you look at the price tag on one of those things, it's probably expensive and you tack on the training, but you make your money back really quickly, like you're saying, in time and in effort. Because if it reduces the amount of holes you got to dig because you did some ground truthing first and you said, listen, let's figure out what's here, then you're making your money back, like you said. Along those lines,
00:14:24
Speaker
Well, that is the number one way I try to sell digital archaeology through WildNote as I try to say, hey, listen, don't look at the cost. Look at the savings. Look at the time savings because time is money. Not to use the cliche, but it really is. The time savings are what gives you it. All these pieces of technology
00:14:42
Speaker
or designed to save you time. And that's what I always tell people that relation to any technology related to archaeology in particular, whether you're talking about digital recording on mobile devices, shallow geophysics, or drones, if it's not saving you time and increasing the value of your data set to your clients or to the site, then don't do it. I mean, it's a simple fact. But chances are all these things will do that. You just need the training for it. So along those lines in the last few minutes of this first segment,
00:15:11
Speaker
You're now a distributor for some of this gear. Do you require training for certain things? Do you sell it to people or do you just heavily advise it? We look at ourselves much more as an advisor. Most of the people that we've sold anything to, that's hardware based, are people who've taken trainings anyway. Because when somebody comes to our training, they're going to have at least three or four different systems to get their hands on. And so I don't have to push anybody to do anything.
00:15:39
Speaker
It's just, you know, here's the different systems. Here's the stuff we like. Obviously, there's a variety of them that are better or worse at different things. Some have more features for filtering data in the field. Some have better features for back workflow and speed deliverable. Some have a single antenna that you can swap in and out. And some have two antenna right in the same box, you know. So to us, it almost doesn't matter. We've had decided that here's kind of the set of systems that we only represent, by the way, things that we use in the field.
00:16:07
Speaker
and so we literally use equipment from four different gpr manufacturers in the field because we feel strongly about all of them and so you know so we offer quite quite a number of options but from a sense of we you know we we're not out there you know pushing and selling it's we really are a training company first which is also very different
00:16:27
Speaker
than most other equipment resellers, because the equipment resellers first. And for us, we actually have told people, look, don't buy it from us yet. Come to the training, because you'll make your decision after you've gone through the motions on three different pieces of equipment. And so that's it. I mean, we really look at ourselves as a training. The reason that we even started to distribute equipment, by the way, was because we felt like we were doing the job.
00:16:55
Speaker
of the resellers because we'd have people who came in and we'd show them how to use their equipment. And they said, I don't know why. We've been using the system for two years and the guy who sold it to us never knew that this function, you never told us about this function. And it was like a critical function to doing things right.
00:17:12
Speaker
It's like, how deep is the object, right? Like, that's pretty critical when you're using GPR. And they were like, the guy who sold to me just never... And so I said, I'm sick and tired of realigning, you know, the customers of other people. So we might as well, you know, step in and offer them stuff that we've personally tested in the field.
00:17:29
Speaker
And so we do a lot of rentals actually do a lot of rentals a lot of used equipment sales and so you know all of them stuff that we literally used in the field and and then back it up with training and support and so i just got tired of literally doing the job of the reseller from another company who spent you know forty five minutes with a customer.
00:17:50
Speaker
You know and did something they only had one unit didn't even know how it worked and you know and they really needed a training to be honest and so that's how we got into the first place we just felt that we were doing the jobs of other people so we said if we're doing the jobs you might as well actually do it you know and make it part of the business and then the other thing was you know we started to actually distribute before we even were distributing radar or any other systems.
00:18:13
Speaker
distributing accessories that people weren't getting. Archaeologists like us, we were always looking for high quality GPS units that were affordable. I'd be a land surveyor. I wasn't interested in firing up a boundary for a dispute or something like that. I just like a RTK level GPS that was totally affordable by somebody doing archaeology. So we started to use systems from a company called Emlid.
00:18:42
Speaker
which are available now, and we're a distributor. And so we started using them for our own personal use. We rented one out to a student of ours, right, who had purchased the GPR, didn't have a GPS unit, got a project.
00:18:58
Speaker
finding sinkholes. And he said, I need a GPS. I said, great, we'll rent you our GPS. We sent him the GPS. He did the project, sent us an email saying invoice me for the GPS and just go buy another one yourself. Because you didn't want to give the GPS.
00:19:15
Speaker
And so after we did, you know, that happened, went to Emlid and said, look, we have a lot of customers just like this guy. Can we just distribute your stuff here? Because there aren't a lot of availability, you know, of it. And they said, yes. So now we distribute two systems that integrate with with any GPR. And we've integrated with the magnetometer.
00:19:34
Speaker
We've integrated them with conductivity meters and other tools that are used in archeological geophysics. So we kind of have a different stuff. And if somebody goes to the website, bigmengeo.com, they'll see the brands that we work with. They're all high-quality brands. Like I said, we've been offered deals from other folks that we've turned down, even though they were, quote unquote, lucrative, just because we've tried their systems and we decided not to use them in the field.
00:19:59
Speaker
And so I don't care how much you offer me, we're not going to represent you if we don't think it's kind of up to par. All right. Well, with that, we're going to take it to break. And when we come back on the other side, we are going to talk about some of the specific applications to CRM and what kind of things you can look for to determine whether or not you need one of these methods. And we'll try to nail that down and solve all the world's problems on the other side of the break, back in a second.
00:20:25
Speaker
It's Chris Webster again. If you haven't checked out our new parent website, CulturoMedia.com, then please do. Culturo is spelled K-U-L-T-U-R-O, and it's where we promote all of our live events. We've got one coming up in November. Check it out over at Culturo when it gets posted. If it's already happened and you're hearing this, then as a member, you can go to your member pages and see the event recording. Our live events are always free, but you have to show up during the event to see it. So that's CulturoMedia.com for all our live events and more. CulturoMedia.com.
00:21:00
Speaker
Chris Webster here, founder of the APN and host of several shows. I just wanted to let you know about our membership program and what it offers. Members of the APN get, for just $7.99 a month or cheaper if you pay for the year, ad-free episodes so you don't have to listen to me on the breaks, membership in our Slack team so you can continue the conversation with hosts and other members, and exclusive access to any of our live event recordings. Live events are always free, but you only get to watch the recording if you're a member.
00:21:26
Speaker
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00:21:46
Speaker
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00:22:18
Speaker
Welcome back to the archaeotech podcast, episode 123. And we are talking to Dr. Dan Bigman of Bigman Geophysical. And on the first segment, Dan, we talked about what you guys offer and the different types of training and some GPRs and things like that. But now I want to focus on CRM. And we can really make this a general archaeological discussion because it's not just CRM that can use these things, obviously anybody working on any project.
00:22:42
Speaker
What are some of the circumstances or scenarios and I know this is really hard to determine, but what are some of the things you can think of where somebody should be saying, Hey, I should be really thinking about shallow geophysics on this project, you know, something like that. I'm thinking of my own self. I've got a project to do out in the Eastern Mojave desert and it's all pedestrian survey.
00:23:02
Speaker
1200 acre pedestrians in the desert. And I'm trying to think in what circumstances we'd have to find some sites and then do it locally on those sites to try to see what subsurface if we got that far. The Navy is probably just going to blow it up. But either way, we'd have to do something like that. But what are some circumstances you can think of where say a CRM firm should be thinking to themselves, hey, I should contact Bigman Geo and figure out how to get this GPR out here or some other method. What are some things people should be thinking about before they make that call?
00:23:30
Speaker
Sure. And it doesn't have to be us. I mean, just contact any firm, you know, maybe a local firm. There's a lot of good firms out there. And folks, you know, we want them to call you. Yeah, I know. But, you know, at figuring out good people to bring on site more often than not.
00:23:51
Speaker
because geophysics in general offers a number of advantages to almost all archaeological projects. There's very few that it offers no advantages to. The first one is, like you suggested even in the first segment, is if you could potentially reduce the number of holes, it's all destructive. Anything is destructive. And so any way we can reduce the number of holes, and by the way, all digging, including shovel tests, actually reduces site safety.
00:24:19
Speaker
So you can't get rid of digging. You still have to have verification. So geophysics is never going to be synonymous with verification. But if you can reduce the number of holes on any site, regardless, or size of excavation, then the project is going to benefit. So that's number one.
00:24:39
Speaker
Number two is some people don't realize how far geophysics has come as far as the deployment of technology. GPR, for example, now has very affordable multi-channel systems. We use one from time to time that's got 32 antenna in one box.
00:24:59
Speaker
And so the box is like an entire meter long. And so you can basically cover a site in a fraction of the time that you used to be able to cover it in, except you do it with higher resolution density, you know, higher density, higher resolution data, and a much faster, uh, uh, backend to like processed information and interpretations that used to be done before, you know, folks, unfortunately, if they haven't used it all that often or use channel system.
00:25:24
Speaker
a lot of time, which is still relevant and important, and we use them all the time. But there are quite a number of projects that can benefit from a multi-channel system because the pricing has gone way down to use this stuff on site because the data acquisition times have become much faster. So the benefits are increasing site safety, reducing destruction, and really, you can get more information for less money in a less amount of time than you used to be able to do.
00:25:54
Speaker
And so most projects, you know, should consider it. I mean, I'll give you a couple, you know, examples. So like, well, you're, you're part of the example, right? You do a large scale survey and you find sites, you know, you could run over a pretty small site in a pretty rapid amount of time, you know, and collect information and see, well, where are the exact high amplitude magnetic anomalies that we can test as opposed to just shovel testing?
00:26:15
Speaker
And you can literally pick and choose a couple of things to really target to see what's going on. Even with magnetometer, there are systems now, there are cart pulled systems with RTK GPS integrated with eight sensors on it that you can have a two or three meter swath of and just cover lots of space in a really short time and just pinpoint the targets of interest. So that'd be like in your case. I'll give you some examples of that we've done over time.
00:26:44
Speaker
We did one project in California, for example, where it was a California transportation-based project, and basically the project was going to disturb an archaeological site that was known and had excavation done on it in the past. But the amount of time that the archaeologist, the Sierra Infirm, was given in order to conduct their
00:27:04
Speaker
you know, 10 test pits, which is what their kind of contract was for, they had a really condensed amount of time. And they knew that the 10 test pits were it, because the site's getting destroyed after that. So, you know, they really had to be specific with the test, and they needed to, you know, condense how long they from start to finish. And so what we did was basically in two days, we ran over two acres with GPR and a magnetometer.
00:27:31
Speaker
And we pinpointed you'll be ranked basically anomalies and said that these few had both a gpr response and a magnetic response and you know these be the ones we hit first this one had only magnetic it's going to be hit second and these were only. Gpr responses and hit those you know third because it was kind of a rocky landscape there's.
00:27:49
Speaker
you know, kind of a things very inconsistent soil. So we were getting reflections off of things that probably were not GPR. I'm sorry that we're not archaeological. But but that's one example right where the the CRM firm itself had a very condensed time, but we covered two acres with two systems in two days. And the best part about this, I get on the plane, I fly back to Atlanta, when I land, I have a picture waiting in my email of a rockline burn pit.
00:28:14
Speaker
that was uncovered, you know, that they did in three hours or four hours that it took me to go from California to, you know, so, you know, that was a win. Nice. Okay. But that's a couple right where you just don't have a lot of time and a lot of space. It's not like the site was a small site was 20 by 20. The scatter of stuff out there was across two acres. And so where do you put your 10 test pits? You know, you can miss everything you want to hit, right? So that was one example.
00:28:41
Speaker
Recently, we did another project in New York. It was a historic site, a national park historic monument. You know, they had some things to do regarding like infrastructure. So they're going to put like new, you know, some new utilities and pipes and things like that in there. But what we were able to do was cover about, I guess, one or two acres
00:29:00
Speaker
of space and high density and basically map responses that were indicative of historic buildings which is what you know the archival research said and so they were able to then in the phase kind of two is just test those buildings. Another benefit by the way of geophysics is not only did we map the archaeological or potentially archaeological and historic material we mapped the pipes and the utilities and so we were able to set yet
00:29:27
Speaker
do a test bit here on this potential historic building, but don't do it here because although it's a probable archeological historic remains, it does have a utility going right through it. And so we're able to use it as kind of cable avoidance and excavation guidance. And so it was another great example. And then we just actually got back from a site
00:29:55
Speaker
One of my one of my employees, I went up there, he went to Maryland. And basically, it was just a, it was just a historic cemetery or suggested historic cemetery. And there were no graves, archival research suggested it was there. We were just processing the data before we jumped on to this podcast before I jumped onto the podcast. And that's a typical thing, right? Is there's it's total unknowns. So the way you used to do it was you'd probe over and over and over across an acre.
00:30:24
Speaker
Our guy finished it in three quarters of a day because he had a GPS integrated GPR system, got a foot and a half spacing or half a meter spacing, just good high density, fast data recovery. And we already have images to send to them and he got back the other day. So that kind of stuff is very helpful because we can then try to go in and pinpoint what's going on as opposed to, I mean, I will not take a push probe across an acre
00:30:56
Speaker
You know, some people don't want it any other way. But you know, when you have the tools, now here's the issue in the day.
00:31:03
Speaker
It took three, four days to do GPR work across the site that size. Now it takes us six hours to do it across the site with higher density and almost through to data processing, interpretations and deliverables within days. It's no longer, when I set up the company even five years ago, it was four to six, I'm sorry, we used to say four to eight weeks for a report delivery.
00:31:30
Speaker
You know, if people want it faster, a lot of times we can turn it around in three or four days just because there's, you know, so much going on.
00:31:38
Speaker
Dan, those are great examples. I want to actually roll back just a little bit to something you said about using both GPR and magnetometry at the same time. Anytime I hear about one or the other, I think back to the late 90s, my advisor, he was working at Telsite in Syria, they used GPR and they got absolutely no results, so they were calling ground non-penetrating radar.
00:32:00
Speaker
And then shortly afterwards they went through with magnetometry and they found great results. The following year I was in a different tell site in Turkey and they had the exact opposite. They got nothing from magnetometry but they got great results from the GPR. So I was wondering, do you know a priori? Do you have a sense of what might, using these two different methods, what might be the better tool for the job? It's going to depend, right? So all geophysics works on is contrast in the geological materials.
00:32:29
Speaker
And obviously, if archaeological materials contrast with the geology or geomorphology.
00:32:34
Speaker
And so sometimes you can kind of have a sense, especially with GPR, what's going to be a, you know, an easy day in the field, you know, with nice results and a party afterwards, or everybody disgruntled and tipped off that they chose this profession. And so, you know, it happens. And a lot of that is driven by, for GPR at least, a couple of things is soil quality, soil quality, we're talking about conductivity and meteorology.
00:32:59
Speaker
And so certain minerals and highly conductive soils will deplete the GPR signals energy very fast and make it tough to see anything at any great depth. The other struggle with GPR, especially in archaeology, and we use this example in the training programs, is you need contrast
00:33:22
Speaker
between the archaeological materials and the host materials that they're embedded in. And so if there's no contrast, even though it's a different material, it's architecture, whatever, if you have a limestone cup block and it's embedded in dense limestone soils, base soils, and it's all dry.
00:33:37
Speaker
It's going to be tough to identify, even if your signal holds up, it's going to be tough to identify that boundary between the soils and the architecture, because all kind of the base material is the same. So that's a struggle, where you might not be able to see much because you just have similar physical properties of the archaeological materials themselves and the material that it's embedded in.
00:34:01
Speaker
So the other side is if you have great contrast or you have a signal that'll hold up really well, then it could be a really great data set that can help. And it's also assuming that you have a good enough frequency of your GPR system to identify the targets that you're
00:34:18
Speaker
And so from the magnetometer side is again, it's looking for, in a sense, it's looking for contrast. It doesn't work exactly the same, but that's really what you're looking for. You're looking for contrast in their intensity of the Earth's magnetic field. And so the Earth has this field at varying intensities across the surface.
00:34:35
Speaker
And so what we're looking for is deviations from the Earth's field. And so what happens is when you have archaeological material sometimes, especially metal, which is cake, but you might have hearths or things like that, where you have a local field and that local field will sometimes both enhance the Earth's field and it'll detract from it. And so those create what we call anomalies to the Earth's magnetic field.
00:34:59
Speaker
And maybe indicative of archaeological remains. The problem is if none of the materials have a magnetic signature themselves, then it could be tough to use a magnetometer to find any archaeological remains on any given site. And so using multi sensory approaches like using GPR and magnetics and connectivity and whatever is always going to bring better results.
00:35:19
Speaker
in the end, and by better, I mean, you know, more information to the archeologists in order to either guide excavations or, you know, make even anthropological kind of assessments about, you know, community structure, whatever it is, is the more systems you use and the larger the perspective is, the larger space that you cover, you know, the more that the community benefits from it. Yeah, makes sense. Unfortunately,
00:35:47
Speaker
customers aren't willing to pay all the time for sensors, right? You know, they just want to pay for one. And that does happen. And we always say, look, we recommend multiple, but one sensor is better than zero sensors.
00:36:03
Speaker
You know, uh, something I want to mention here, uh, based on what you said earlier, your, your guy that went up to Maryland and was able to do that project with a GPS, um, basically a GPS linked GPR and really get this thing done accurately. You know, the antennas for these, uh, ground penetrating radars look a lot like Roomba's, which make me think, is there a reason this can't be like a car, like a, uh,
00:36:28
Speaker
like a combination of something like, you know, like a Roomba and automated farm equipment. I mean, they have combines out there running with no people in them, just going back and forth, back and forth doing these things based on GPS tracks. Is there anything like that even available on the high end? Or do you think that's something coming along soon? I mean, with object avoidance and things like that, and just have a technician out there to kind of monitor it, make sure it doesn't run into traffic.
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it's on its way. There's nothing out there right now that's like, you know, an autonomous vehicle crawler based type of system. There's been a lot of like chatter and excitement of throwing GPR onto drones, which we've worked on projects like that, where, you know, the application is going to drive it, right. And so the ones that were drones were a base metric survey. So basically working with customers who
00:37:22
Speaker
are engineering firms and they're trying to find the bottom of a freshwater lake or freshwater river and basically map the topography of the bottom of the lake bed.
00:37:30
Speaker
And so you used to have to do it by putting it in a raft and then drag the raft across. And generally in the US, you still have to do it that way because there are FCC limitations on how high you can go with a GPR attached to a drone. And so that hasn't picked up here yet, but we've done them in other parts of the world. But everyone's all excited about GPR on drones, and I am too, but really,
00:37:53
Speaker
Size of the targets and application are going to drive what the best thing is I said for archaeology I just don't think the drones gonna be the best vehicle for you know, I really believe that and I could be wrong I mean this remains to be seen but I believe that Just because drones are very exciting right now. I think you get better information From a crawler based unmanned vehicle than you would with a drone and I so my point is I think it is coming you know down the line you do have to engineer it in a way that minimizes how much
00:38:24
Speaker
noise ends up in the data. Sure. And so as long as they kind of overcome that stuff, you know, my assumption is that it will, it won't be too far away from us, you know, to, to do that, or you attach it to something that, that's just, you know, like a crawler or a vehicle, an autonomous vehicle that's far enough away, and it's just dragging it, but it happens to drag it, you know, three meters behind. And so it won't impact too bad. But is this a great question? Okay, still got to send the guy up there to push it.
00:38:56
Speaker
We only have a few minutes left here. The last thing that I wrote down, because I'm curious about this, you mentioned being able to find things like, almost as a happenstance of just doing the project, but then for other clients specifically, finding things like buried pipes and cables and stuff like that. Is there any
00:39:15
Speaker
concern around the energy generated by the GPR and certain things you could find. I'm thinking like natural gas lines, stuff like that. I'm specifically thinking of like unexploded ordnance, which is a possibility on the project I'm going to be on. Is there any possibility of the energy provided by this thing or output by this thing exciting the thing that you're detecting and possibly causing an issue like an explosion?
GPR Applications in Industry
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah. So number one, just for total transparency, right? I am not an electrical engineer.
00:39:43
Speaker
Okay, so I just want to be really glad to say this. I'm an archaeologist that actually asked me that you're like, I'm thinking about building a radar, will you help me? And I'm like, I'm not the right guy, you know, after you make it. But, you know, I'm a field guy with an archaeology background. So just take what I say with a grain of salt when it comes to this kind of stuff. Now, I can only tell you what other people, you know, have said to me. And so number one, no, GPR is used all the time.
00:40:10
Speaker
for doing unexploded ordnance surveys. Used all the time for doing natural gas surveys. Actually, it's a critical technology for doing natural gas pipeline surveys because traditional methods aren't always able to find them. Basically, if you have a natural gas line that's PVC or fiberglass or something like that that's not conductive,
00:40:29
Speaker
If that pipe was not buried with a tracer wire, you can't use an EM locator, which are like what the guys use on the side of the roads that you're looking at who are spray painting everywhere. And so those are great tools. But if your pipeline is not conductive and it doesn't have a wire that's buried with the pipeline to push a frequency through, GPR might be the only way to identify it. So it's often used for natural gas pipelines and things like that.
00:40:58
Speaker
For UXO, it's also used and so it shouldn't excite it.
00:41:01
Speaker
But so here's the kind of the electrical engineering piece that I'll say is when I did a training, and so we still get trained, by the way, we are definitely not the people who say, no, no, no, we know enough, and we never have to learn again. And I'm smiling while I'm saying this on the other side of this computer, because we do get people like that. They call us up and ask us for a question. We're like, you know, we do cover this in a training, you might want to sit in and kind of get so and they're like, I could teach your class. I said, well, maybe you can, but
00:41:30
Speaker
you know, you never with a second you think you don't need to learn is your start dying. And so we still get trained. And I look for training all the time. And there are lots of great, you know, information out there and lots of other great knowledgeable people to talk to. So Greg Johnson, basically from central software, laid it out for me in this way. And he said basically that your cell phone is 1000 times and I hope I'm not misquoting the number.
00:41:53
Speaker
Sorry, Greg. But your cell phone is more powerful than the radar. So his kind of point was that the energy produced from the radar really is not all that dramatic and excite unexploded ordnance or anything else for that matter, because it is a pretty low amount of energy. And part of that too is the FCC has pretty strict restrictions on how much output the radar can use. OK.
00:42:24
Speaker
So don't worry, but maybe you don't push it around. Maybe that one you do a drone that flies a half a meter above the ground surface. Or use an unmanned crawler. But yeah, they're using UXO all the time. That's right. OK.
00:42:41
Speaker
All right, Paul, do you have anything else, uh, for Dan? I want to of course, go around. I want to forth go around at the archeo tech podcast in another year or two from now. And I'm not going to be happy Chris, if you're not, you know, the producer on it and you're, you know, if you're not the interviewer because of this UXO project. That's right. That's right. Uh,
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah. Don't lose any limbs over this. No, no, definitely not. All right. Well, I think that's all the time we have with Dan today. Paul and I are going to come back for the app of the day segment, but Dan, before we go, I have links to some of the things you've mentioned, like your website and YouTube here, but let's just remind everybody one more time how they can get ahold of you and your company and where they can find your stuff online.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, so you can go to either bigmangeo.com or you can go to learngpr.com. And we have lots of free training, you know, online trainings over there, some free webinars and things like that about GPR. You can find us on any platform at whatever the platform is, learn, you know, slash learn GPR. I've got a big following on Facebook. You know, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
00:43:48
Speaker
Definitely go to the YouTube channel and subscribe again. We have like over 90 videos up there cool times me in front of a whiteboard sometimes me ranting while I'm waiting for a plane, you know to go somewhere but You feel free to make fun of me in the comments. So yeah anywhere but but you know YouTube Facebook Twitter Instagram slash learn GPR and you'll find us
00:44:09
Speaker
Awesome. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Dan. And we'll definitely have you on again, assuming I don't explode in the next two weeks. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, guys. Take care.
00:44:23
Speaker
Hey fans of APN Podcasts, we've got lots of designs over at our Tea Public store. Every purchase helps out the APN with a few cents back to us. Check out the high quality t-shirts, stickers, phone cases, coffee mugs, and a lot more. There are lots of colors to choose from in most of those items and Tea Public often runs 30% discounts. So check out the store at arcpodnet.com slash shop. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop and click on the link.
00:44:50
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archaeotech podcast, episode 123. And this is the app of the day segment. However,
00:44:57
Speaker
Paul and I were talking, and we realized, hey, don't I really have a lot of apps to talk about right now? I think that's actually kind of a good thing. I'm going to give an update on a couple apps. But man, when you find good apps for your mobile devices that you're using consistently, I mean, you're not out on the app store just looking for stuff anymore, right? Yeah, that's true. I think so. I think that actually says a lot about app developers and app development. And we're not dissatisfied with what we're using that we're always constantly looking for new things.
00:45:26
Speaker
But if we are, we'll definitely talk about it. So I'll give one update and I will talk about one new app that I've been using that I don't think is too uncommon for people, but I'll talk about it anyway. So first off, I canceled my new subscription.
00:45:39
Speaker
So I've been using new, yeah, I mentioned it, I've been using it for what, three months now or something like that. And I actually didn't really know what it was, right? I've taken health classes before, I've taken through the VA, I've taken like, what is it?
00:45:58
Speaker
What am I trying to think? Those people that provide health advice. What am I trying to say? There's something like classes or something. Anyway, I've talked to people that are nutritionists. That's the word I'm looking for. I've talked to nutritionists, so I'm very aware of what it takes to be healthy and lose weight.
00:46:16
Speaker
have a problem doing it. But I'm very aware of the actual science behind it. I'm relatively well read on that. I read articles all the time, not just like Huffington Post or Buzzfeed articles, but like real articles. Staying up on that kind of stuff. And it turns out, Noom was basically two things. And I want to
00:46:38
Speaker
tell people about this in case you're thinking about doing it. But NUMA is basically two things. One, it is daily structured articles, really well-written articles with a lot of psychology and a lot of science behind them. And they're very well done from that standpoint with some little quizzes built in. It prompts you to weigh yourself every single day, which is a good thing. It prompts you to track your calories and write down everything that you're eating. And then they actually give you your
00:47:01
Speaker
You report your foods if it's in their database. If it's not in their database, it's hard for them to tell you what kind of it is. But if it's in their database, they either call it a red food, a yellow food, or a green food. And their basic thing is, yeah, stay within your calorie limit for the day, but also eat more green foods, which doesn't mean plants. It means foods that are calorie dense. That's what they're really concerned with. Like for example, there's this one shake thing that I, it's like, it's called a heal. I've been having that for basically lunch for the past like six months. It's kind of like a protein shake, but it's not a protein shake.
00:47:30
Speaker
It's not really like a meal replacement shake either, but the point is it's two cups of water and about 400 calories. So it is a meal, but it's got a lot of good stuff in it. And I'm just doing it because I don't have time to eat lunch, right? I'm just like constantly doing stuff and I can mix with one of these and get on a conference call no problem rather than just sitting there eating like a meal or crunching on something. But that's why I got it. But that shows up as a red food in Noom because water is not very calorie dense.
00:47:56
Speaker
So that was a little bit irritating to me. I was like, but it's got all the good stuff in it, but it's a red food. That's not why I quit it. The other thing that it has is it has groups. So they, they like, I think around week three or week four or something like that, they put you into a group of people. And if you're the kind of person
00:48:12
Speaker
that's going to interact well with the group, they prompt you at the end of certain lessons to like share your experience related to something with the group. And then people can comment on that. And it's intended to be like kind of a support group, but it's literally a support group of people you've never met before, which is fine. You can see their profiles, I guess, whatever they put in, and you're supposed to like help each other. Well, I never really got anything out of that. And while the articles are great and all,
00:48:38
Speaker
The other two things you get out of that is meal calorie tracking and weigh ins, which I've been doing on my fitness pal for about seven years, right? I mean, I've got a long history with my fitness pal doing that. So that was something I was already used to doing and my fitness pal's database of foods is way bigger. And my wife and I both do calorie tracking. She started doing Noom about a month ago and we can't share, like we eat the same meals a lot of times and we can't share those meals. And so we've each got to enter in everything. On my fitness pal, you can just,
00:49:08
Speaker
you know, hit, hit the share button and share individual things that you just had together. So one person enters it and I can send it to her via text. She clicks on it and then adds it to her, my fitness pal. And, um, or would that be her fitness pal? No, her, my fitness pal. Yes. Um, but I know somebody's fitness pal. Anyway, um,
00:49:28
Speaker
So, the point is the only thing Noom was giving me that I guess was a little more than I was normally getting was the articles. And if this is brand new information for you, like if you don't know anything about nutrition, if you don't know anything about what you're supposed to be doing and all the psychology behind it and what makes you choose that apple over that cupcake, if you don't know those things, then Noom is going to be a great resource for
00:49:51
Speaker
education and stuff like that.
Review of Noom Experience
00:49:54
Speaker
But for $169, which I think the charge for like 10 months or something like that, which is a weird timeframe, but I think that's what it was, it just didn't seem worth it to me, for me in particular. And so I canceled it. Here's how the canceling went. It was insane.
00:50:10
Speaker
So first off, one of the people who I'm still not sure is an actual person, it could be a bot, sent me a message that said, hey, you haven't logged into the app in like two days. That was what the warning, I was gone. I was, you know, there was nothing I could log in and do except read the articles. And then I just was working too long in days and I forgot about it. That was last week and I was in New Orleans.
00:50:28
Speaker
And she sent me a message, and I finally was just like, you know what? I'm done with this thing. So I replied to this private message in this group thing to Holly, who is my thing, and in there. Again, I don't know if she's a real person or not. And I said, you know what? I think I just need to cancel this. I'm not getting anything out of the articles. I already do calorie tracking and stuff, and I need to find a different way to fix my problems.
00:50:50
Speaker
because I don't think this is working for me for the cost. I thought it was something different. Literally got a system generated message within a millisecond of sending that that says, it looks like you're having an issue and we'll have one of our system administrators contact you. And then like three minutes later, I was credited $116 on my credit card. My account was canceled.
00:51:11
Speaker
Like it's like, if you don't want to be here, see ya. Bye. I was, I was a little bit upset about that, but also gratified at the same time that they weren't going to wait like 10 days to pay me back. They just canceled everything. But then it was like, you're in the business of psychology and coaching. Like, shouldn't you just be like, Hey, maybe you should think about this for a second. No, I said, cancel. I said the word cancel in my message. I was done within five minutes.
00:51:34
Speaker
So yeah, no chance to take that back. So anyway, so that was it. That's what I get rid of. I don't know. Yeah. Is a hot potato a red or a green food? You know what? A potato might actually be a yellow food. So right there in the middle, because it is a vegetable and it is calorie dense. So I don't know. Yeah. Hot potato. I don't know. Paul, didn't you say your mom or your mother-in-law or somebody was doing them?
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, my mom had signed up for it and I doubt that she uses it. She's in my entire life gone through a million different fad diets and things. So I'll see her actually in a couple of days. I'll ask if she's still doing it, but I haven't gotten any updates and I suspect that she, you know,
00:52:20
Speaker
Knowing her, she wouldn't be reading the articles and the personal trainer aspect of it wouldn't really be too appealing, I think. So I suspect that she's going to have to cancel it sometime soon. But we'll see. I mean, I could just be guessing from previous experience. Maybe there is something about this that works a little better with her than other things have.
00:52:44
Speaker
Well, and you bring up a good point too. So there were two add-ons that I didn't actually pay for. What I had was like the base Noom account. This is like the minimum, right? Still like $169 for something like nine or 10 months. But you could also add on customized meal plans.
00:53:02
Speaker
which my wife and I already do, but you could add on customized meal plans or you could add on a training plan. I don't know what those look like, but they are additional fees. So maybe, I'll fully admit this, maybe if I had done, I don't know, like a training plan or something like that, I would have had a different experience or something. But the articles was really the thing that was getting me down because I have real big OCD when it comes to finishing something.
00:53:24
Speaker
And there was probably five or six articles per day. Some of them, you're looking at maybe 20 minutes worth of reading. Not that big of a time commitment, but when it's every single day. And then when I miss a day or I don't finish all the articles in a day, I feel like I have to go back. And in fact, when we were gone for Christmas, I was so discouraged with putting in all the random foods that I was just putting in nothing, which means I wasn't opening the app. My way of coping with that was I didn't open the app at all, which means I didn't read any articles for like two weeks.
00:53:53
Speaker
And they kept sending me messages saying, oh, we haven't opened the app in a while. And so I opened it just to shut those down for a few days. But I was just so discouraged by the food situation that I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't able to weigh myself because I didn't have our scale. I wasn't going to use a different scale because that's different results. And I wasn't able to really put any food in because you're eating home baked goods every day. How am I supposed to put that in? So I just got discouraged and didn't do any of it. Well,
00:54:17
Speaker
first week of January, when I came back, I basically contacted them through my little thing there and I said, Hey, can you just roll me back like four weeks and I can just, I can just breed all that stuff all over again. Um, just because I couldn't handle it. So that's the other big thing is I liked the information, but man, my OCD just wouldn't allow me to skip articles and feel good about it. You know what I mean? And just keep on going. And I don't know. I felt like I was missing stuff.
00:54:43
Speaker
Yeah. That's the same thing that the people that use their inbox as a to-do list quickly stop being able to open up their emails because it just becomes too daunting. There are too many things. I have too much to sort. And it does remind me, this is way off topic, but it does remind me of a piece of advice I got when I was writing my dissertation was don't give yourself a goal in a given day of doing
00:55:07
Speaker
Two hours of work because what happens is you don't do it one day the next day you got I got four hours of work and it piles up so fast it just becomes demoralizing and no time at all so that instead of the two hours of work give yourself something trivially easy fifteen minutes of work.
00:55:26
Speaker
And that 15 minutes of work can turn into an hour or two pretty easily. And then at the end of that, you feel good. And then if you miss a day, you don't feel so bad. And so it's just a way of kind of regulating your own expectations and your own sense of progress. So I could definitely see how having that level of having things sent at you to read that you have to feel like you have to keep on top of it could actually be a massive demotivator too. I mean, I think that's exactly how it would work for me. Yeah.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me. So I don't know. Like I said, if you're not like that and you can just do what you can every day and you're still getting something out of it, then it might, uh, it might be beneficial. So, um, you know, I don't know. I don't know. So.
00:56:10
Speaker
Anyway, I'll mention real briefly, because this took a lot longer to talk about than I thought it would. And we went a little long on the other two segments, so I'll keep this short. But I recently got a GoPro Hero 8 Black, which I think is the newest GoPro that's out there.
Exploring GoPro Hero 8 Features
00:56:24
Speaker
We're doing some new video projects. I'm probably going to pick up another one. But I did want to mention really briefly, because I haven't had a chance to really dive into this, but the GoPro app that comes with that
00:56:34
Speaker
First off, there's certain circumstances because they make so many attachments for these things where you can put a GoPro in a configuration where you can't actually see the screen on the back so you don't know how your shot is framed. And one of the cool things is the app allows because the GoPro itself has GPS inside or at least the Hero 8 Black does. It has GPS inside, it has Bluetooth inside, it has Wi-Fi inside.
00:56:55
Speaker
So you can connect to it through the app really quickly, like the startup time to connect the app through the, through the GoPro is, is less than a minute, less than 45 seconds, probably. I haven't timed it, but it's very fast compared, you know, compared to other things I've seen and the
00:57:10
Speaker
The cool thing is you have all functionality in the app. So I can set the camera up in any situation configuration that I want and then click into the app, check the picture, change the settings if I want, choose regular activity settings or time lapse or slow mo or whatever I'm going to do, and then see the picture that I can see and then hit start. And it just starts going and then I can stop it as well. The one thing it wasn't doing, because I think it might be a lower
00:57:38
Speaker
picture quality setting that this will work on, but I've got it set on 4K right now. And it wasn't transmitting that video back in real time. It was just allowing you to see the preview image before you started transmitting. So while you just had the camera on, you could see the live image. But then once you hit recording, it basically fuzzed out and said, you're not going to see anything. Again, I don't know if that's tied to the image quality that it was sending back or not. It might have been too much for that signal.
00:58:03
Speaker
or it just doesn't do it. It doesn't matter. Once you're already recording, it doesn't matter what it looks like. You're recording. Stop and reset if you need to reset. So I just wanted to mention that because it was pretty cool. And also, I guess while we're talking about the gear, I've heard other reviews on previous versions of GoPros and the onboard camera. I mean, sorry, the onboard microphone was never like the best. I mean, not the worst either, but definitely not the best thing. And most serious people that were using it for YouTube or whatever would get like an external camera. But I'll tell you what,
00:58:31
Speaker
This microphone is what I mean. The microphone is fantastic. It's really good. Now, we're going to get the external media mod kit, they said, that comes with it. But it's so backward right now. It's probably not going to be until April or so, because this just came out a couple months ago. But I'm really looking forward to that. So that should come out. And I'll give a little more information on why I'm buying these cameras and what's going on when all this is live.
00:58:58
Speaker
in two or three more recordings, I'll be able to really announce that and say where you guys can go to see some of this stuff. Cool. But that'll be later on. And I'll probably have more reviews because I've got more gear coming as related to that. In fact, today I just bought two crazy. Let me talk about this from a tech standpoint. I went on Amazon. This thing came with a 64 gigabyte microSD card, which is at 4K. It's about 45 to 55 minutes of video at 4K.
00:59:28
Speaker
So I needed more cards. The one is not going to do it. But I went on there. A 256 gigabyte microSD card that is high speed, able to handle 4K because your write speed to the card needs to be seriously fast. Like the connection between the card and the camera needs to be fast for it to write 4K video in real time. That 256 gigabyte card was $35.
00:59:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's $35. Yeah. They had a 512 gigabyte micro SD card that was $99. So I bought two 256 gigabyte ones.
01:00:05
Speaker
It's like, that's easy math because I can switch it out. I mean, 256 should end up being like three or four hours of video. Yeah. Buying reputable cards is another side, but buying reputable cards from reputable dealers is important because I've seen people, maintenance guys that have come by my office because they have USB drives that they purchased off eBay.
01:00:30
Speaker
And some of the manufacturers do this nasty, nasty trick. They'll sell you what's basically just a four or an eight gig drive, and they'll advertise it on eBay for as like a terabyte drive.
01:00:45
Speaker
and they'll sell it to you for 15 bucks and you can keep on writing well above that four or eight gig limit. It just overwrites what was there before because they've taken out the checks to make sure that you don't do that. So it looks to the uninitiated as it's a humongous drive that's a great deal, but it's really not. So that's probably not what you're dealing with because I haven't seen that with SD cards, but I definitely have seen that with certain, usually eBay sold
01:01:16
Speaker
garbage USB drive. So that's just a little caveat emptor for anybody. Nice, nice. Yeah, and I'll talk about this after I get it too, because I just bought these things today. But I also bought a new Lacey rugged four terabyte external hard drive.
Video Editing Essentials
01:01:33
Speaker
I've got a two terabyte RAID drive, I think it is. So it's actually four terabytes, but two of them internally. So it writes to both. Then I've had just hooked to my computer for the past
01:01:42
Speaker
I don't know, four or five years. It just sits there and runs. It's my time machine backup for all my big important folders. So I've had that going for a really long time, but it's a Thunderbolt connection. I thought about pulling it off of there and just because I've literally never needed it. You know, it's like an insurance policy. I thought about pulling it off there and using it to travel with because my computer does not have enough space to handle all this video.
01:02:01
Speaker
and edit in real time. So when I bought the new Lacey drive, I bought it with a USB-C connection. It'll also do a legacy Thunderbolt, but I've got a USB-C connection. And the thing I like about this four terabyte drive that I bought, and this is why I bought this one, is I can edit video from the drive. Like I don't need to just use it for storage. It's got a fast enough speed back and forth that I can actually edit video that's on the drive.
01:02:26
Speaker
and just use my computer as basically a screen and just do that. So looking forward to that, because video, man, that shit takes up a lot of space when you start really messing with it. And then if you're editing video the right way, you're not actually affecting your original files. You're making copies in the video editing software and editing those. So your originals always remain raw and untouched. That's any good editing program would do that. I do that with our podcast editing. So this podcast right here,
01:02:52
Speaker
because of the original files, and then the files that Audition is going to make, and then the WAV file I make for the mastering step, and then the additional MP3 I make that you guys are actually listening to right now. I mean, this hour-long podcast is going to be four gigabytes worth of data on my hard drive, and that fills up quick.
01:03:12
Speaker
That's all we have time for. Did we ramble enough? I think we did ramble enough, though. Let us know your tech woes for the spring. We'll see if we can bring someone on to talk about them. But we've got a lot of great stuff lined up for the next few weeks. So keep on coming back. I mean, we're booked out through April, actually, with interviews. So a lot of good stuff coming up here. And we'll bring that all to you on time, next two weeks. All right. Thanks a lot, Paul, for coming on. We'll thank Dan. And we'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.
01:03:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
01:04:13
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
01:04:34
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this podcast. Please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcasting app. You can also consider becoming a member so we can keep content like this free and available to all. Check out pricing and info at arcpodnet.com slash members. Thanks again, and have a great day.